Blog Post #2: Chupacabras

Chupacabras

Coming from a Hispanic household, I have been told many stories about chupacabras. As the professor explains in Lecture #2 chupacabras is a mysterious creature that attacked pets and farm animals. By sucking all their blood this mysterious animal kills them, just living the animal’s body and bones. Some stories tell that chupacabras actually eats the animal. I’ve been raised in Lima, the city of my country so, you don’t hear chupacabra’s stories that often in there, but I remember always going to visit my grandma outside of the city, she used to have a farm with animals and pets. I remember loving to visit my grandma, but I was terrified by all the stories her neighbors and her were telling me about this creature, I even had trouble sleeping in her house at night. Also, I remember her telling me about the neighbor’s animals missing and found dead and they thought it was the chupacabra’s fault. They describe this creature just as the pictures in the lecture. 

 

It is really interesting how all of these Hispanic countries have this mythical creature in common, and how we all Hispanic kids have this mutual terror for the chupacabras when we were little. Now that I’m grown up, I wonder how this story went from Puerto Rico all the way to South America, Peru, where I’m from. In my research for this post I have read an article that says “In recent years, chupacabras have been reported as far afield as Russia and the Philippines” (Gabbatis, 2016). I didn't know but it appears there are two types of chupacabras, there is a video underneath that explains this. There is no real proof the chupacabras existed. Most pictures you find on the internet about this creature are from dogs without hair or some pictures and videos that had been manipulated. I can assure you there are some pretty good explanations why those pets and animals are found dead under those conditions. It was interesting to remember a monster who did let me sleep at night in my childhood. 

 

- Gabbatiss, Josh. “Earth - the Truth about a Strange Blood-Sucking Monster.” BBC, BBC, 10 Nov. 2016, www.bbc.com/earth/story/20161109-the-truth-about-a-strange-blood-sucking-monster.